Movie Review

District 9

Compiled by Tawsif Saleheen

Born out of the ashes of Halo, District 9 flies in under the late-summer radar as a fascinating scifi specimen, wielding a South African based story about extra-terrestrial refugees forced to live in barbed-wire slums under the watchful eye of a sinister conglomerate called Multi-National United (MNU).

Set in the years after a massive alien craft appears over South Africa's largest city, the story follows Wikus van der Merwe (Copley), an agent for Multi-National United (MNU), the firm contracted to manage the alien visitors. Wikus has little compassion for the extra-terrestrial plight - he's also entrenched in bureaucracy and not particularly good at his job (it's as if Murray from Flight Of The Conchords has been thrown onto the frontlines of a war documentary). After inadvertently triggering an alien device, he's infected with a virus that has a drastic effect on his body. He begins to grow a hideous claw on his left hand and gains the ability to fire alien weaponry. This makes him a wanted man, forcing him to retreat into District 9, the segregated area for the non-humans he once policed.

District 9's great strength is its ability to subvert genre expectations - these aliens have arrived with a whimper not a bang, their ship shunning the usual glitz and glamour of America and just going kaput over South Africa. The creatures themselves bring little in the way of technological advances, they are ugly (dubbed "prawns") and have a taste for cat food. Earth's humanitarian efforts quickly fizzle out for these undesirable refugees and they're given residence in the shanty villages of District 9. The location supports the thematic plates Blomkamp is spinning, with parallels cleverly drawn to the apartheid and South Africa's unfortunate history with race relations. These elements push District 9 into a higher realm of science fiction as it uses its aliens and visual effects not as window dressing, but as a way to examine the blacker side of human nature.

Source: Internet